A Princess for Christmas Page 8

  “We brought it with us.”

  “You brought your own coffee?”

  “I like what I like, and I didn’t want to bother the B and B owner this early. Will brewed it for us at the inn this morning before we left.” He gestured toward a silver carafe sitting on the small table to the right.

  The joys of having exactly what you wanted when you wanted it—how Mariabella missed that. She loved living in Harborside, but there were aspects of palace life that she did miss. Being able to call down to the kitchen at two in the morning because she had a sudden craving for pizza. Waking up to breakfast in bed every morning. Having someone there to tend to everything she needed—from new shoes to making the bed.

  Of course, that had all come at a price. A lack of privacy. Her entire life dictated from the day she was born. A public face she could never stop wearing. She’d brew her own coffee, thank you very much, and have her life to herself.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” He grinned, then shifted in his seat to face her. “I have only one rule for this trip. We don’t talk about Harborside or the argument we’re having about its future for the entire trip. Instead, we act like—” he paused, and met her gaze “—friends.”

  Mariabella nearly spit out her coffee. “Friends? You? And me?”

  “Am I that much of an ogre?”

  She bit back a smile at his choice of words. If he only knew who she was, he wouldn’t reference fairy-tale creatures. “No. Not an ogre.”

  “Then is it that unbelievable that you and I could be friends under different circumstances?”

  Her gaze locked with his blue eyes. A shiver of awareness ran through her, and she thought of the moment in the lighthouse. How close they had come to kissing. How much she had wanted him to kiss her. How lonely she had been over the last year, heck, her whole life. She hadn’t been seen as just Mariabella, as an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, by any man.

  Until now.

  She had a chance, for a few hours, to sit and play the game. To pretend. Would that be so bad?

  “Perhaps not so unbelievable,” she said.

  A smile curved along his face, feeding the desire that had been coiling in her gut with the memory of that near kiss. When he smiled, it lit up his eyes, crinkled along the corners, and made her wonder—

  What if?

  “So what do non-ogre friends talk about?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Well, for starters, where did you grow up?”

  Under any other circumstances, with any other person, that question would be ordinary. Something that wouldn’t send out the palace guards on a rescue mission. Or the media on a “find the princess” frenzy. There was no way to answer that with the truth, not if she wanted to keep her identity secret. “Along the coast of Italy,” she said finally. A small lie. Uccelli was north of Italy’s coast.

  “From your accent, I assumed that. I’ve traveled there. Beautiful country.”

  “And you?” she asked, before he could probe deeper into her past. “Did you always live in New York?”

  “I’ve never known another home, if you can call an apartment a home.”

  “And you do not.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a place to lay my head at night. When I’m there.”

  “I know how that feels,” she said quietly. Darn. How did that slip out?

  “Isn’t Harborside a home for you?”

  “It is the closest thing to home I’ve ever known.” That was the truth. She could feel the smile filling her face, the joy she’d found in the tiny seaport exploding in the gesture. “I love it there.”

  “You didn’t love your life in Italy?”

  “I was not—” she paused, choosing her words carefully “—as happy there. As…comfortable, not like I am in Harborside.”

  “You’re lucky.” His gaze went to the window, and she wondered if he was watching Harborside in the distance, or something else. “I haven’t found a place like that. And I’ve been all over the world.”

  “I think home is where you make it. I think I would have been just as happy in New York or California or London.”

  “Yet you didn’t find home where you grew up.”

  “There were…other issues involved.”

  He arched a brow. “Like what?”

  She peered at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “We are just friends getting to know each other, are we not? I do not have to tell all on the first trip.”

  “You are a mysterious woman, Mariabella.”

  Her name rolled off his tongue like a song. A craving to hear him say it again rose inside her, and she found herself leaning forward, as if moving nearer would make Jake repeat his words. “I thought men liked mystery.”

  “We do.” A smile, a twinkle in his eyes. “Very much.”

  Flirting. They were flirting.

  She should stop.

  “And what about you?” she asked. “Do you like a woman with a little mystery?”

  Jake paused a moment, then leaned closer. He reached up and caught a tendril of her hair between his fingers. She held her breath, her heart pounding a furious beat. “I didn’t think I did.” A second passed. He let the tendril of hair slide through his fingers. “Until now.”

  Desire roared inside her. Her gaze locked on his eyes, then his mouth. Her thoughts drifted to what those lips could do, given half a chance. Oh, my. “Then I suppose I should stay mysterious.”

  Why had she said that? Why hadn’t she backed away?

  She needed to stay uninvolved. Unencumbered. It was the only way to protect the freedom she had worked so hard to achieve.

  And yet…

  His touch drifted along her cheek now, and she forgot to breathe, forgot her name. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to unravel a puzzle,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Am I a puzzle to you?”

  She nodded. Her voice seemed to have gone south, too.

  “How is that? I thought most men were pretty easy to figure out.”

  “Your intentions are…not always so clear.” Like whether he wanted just the land in Harborside, or whether he wanted her, too. Or whether this whole seduction scene was merely an attempt to talk her into signing on the dotted line.

  “It is getting a little muddled, isn’t it?”

  She nodded again.

  “Then let’s stick to just the ride.” He sat back against his seat, and disappointment filtered into the space between them.

  She should have been happy. She should have been thrilled to return to her comfort zone, the one that didn’t involve the encumbrance of a relationship.

  Except the empty spots in her heart, her life, kept crying out for someone else to bring another dimension to her days and nights. Someone who understood her. Who knew the real Mariabella.

  Ha. That would mean starting with telling a man who she really was. And she couldn’t do that, not without giving up everything that mattered.

  The rest of the ride, she and Jake exchanged small talk, as if both of them had decided to maintain their distance. He took several calls; she pulled a sketch pad out of her purse, and kept herself busy making drawings of the landscape around them, as the sun came up and kissed the winter land with light.

  A few hours later, they crossed into New York City. The buildings and noise surrounded them in an instant, a cacophony of noise and color. Mariabella set her sketchbook aside and sat back, taking in the view, enthralled by the massive skyscrapers, the congestion of people, the burst of holiday decorations on every building, every street corner.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “Twice,” she said, not explaining both trips had been state business with her father, never vacations. “But every time, it is like seeing New York all over again.”

  “Then we’ll have to return when we have more time,” he said.

  She glanced back at Jake, trying to read the meaning in those words. B
ut his gaze was on the view outside, and not on her.

  A few minutes later, William stopped the limo in front of an elaborate hotel, seated across from Central Park. The Lattimore Resort and Hotel had the appearance of being trimmed in gold, and featured four-story columns, and a two-story all-glass front door that revealed a marble foyer and massive water fountain inside.

  Jake made a long-winded speech, explaining the hotel’s virtues, listing its rooms, its five-star spa, its technologically advanced business center. “It’s one of the best Lattimore Resorts available, and we’d bring a lot of these features to Harborside, so that many of the upscale clientele could find these same amenities when they go on a small-town vacation.”

  “It is certainly impressive,” Mariabella said.

  Jake put up a finger, motioning for William to wait before getting out to open the doors. “But you don’t love it.”

  “Well…I don’t mean to be rude, but anyone can build a hotel. Even an impressive one. I’ve stayed in many like this one.”

  “And would you stay in this one?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ in that sentence.” He draped an arm over the back of the seat and studied her. “What is it?”

  “Jake, we drove all these hours and miles. I do not want to criticize your hotel before I have seen it. We should go in, and I will give it a fair view.”

  “You’ve seen enough to make a judgment, though, haven’t you?”

  She wanted to lie. Thought about lying. But really, where would that get her? And him? “I…” She sighed. “I simply like something different.”

  He chewed that over for a minute. “But this is what we have planned for Harborside.”

  “I know.” She placed her palm against the window, as if she could block the hotel, which reminded her so much of the castle. “Don’t you have anything…simpler?”

  “All of our resorts are like this. Studies show—”

  She wheeled toward him. “I do not read studies. I read in here.” She laid a hand on her heart. “And there must be something else. Something less…gaudy.”

  He rubbed at his chin, thinking about her words for so long, Mariabella was sure she had offended him. She shouldn’t have said a thing. After all, if someone had come in and criticized her gallery, she would have been upset. Jake probably felt the same way about his hotel. It would have been better just to exclaim over every feature and leave it at that.

  Hadn’t she learned to be polite? To keep her opinions to herself? A princess didn’t voice her opinions, not in front of others. A princess was, above all, polite and sweet. Never disparaging, never disagreeable.

  And always, always diplomatic.

  She touched Jake’s hand. “We can go inside. I am sure this is a lovely hotel with a great deal to offer your guests.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You made very valid points. And I happen to agree with them, even if the research shows otherwise. I just happen to be a guy who likes a different kind of vacation experience.”

  She laughed. “Me, too. This—” she waved toward the hotel “—is not my idea of a vacation.”

  He nodded. “Then let me show you something else.” He picked up a phone beside him and told Will to start driving again. The limo pulled away from the curb and glided down the road.

  “Well, I had hoped that building would impress you.”

  She shook her head. “I am sorry. I am a simple person. I like home and what do you call it…? Hearth. If you had something like that, maybe then—”

  Jake grabbed the phone again. “Will, do you remember that place in New Jersey?” He paused. “Yeah, that’s the one. Let’s go there.” Another pause. “I know, I know, but I can call in a favor and we can get in there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere that has home and hearth. A lot of it.” Jake glanced out the window and watched New York rush by. “This city may be my address, but where I’m taking you, that’s the only place I ever felt at home.”

  Woodsmoke curled from the chimney and scented the air with hickory. Two white rocking chairs on the long wraparound porch waved lazily in the chilly breeze. Snowdrifts danced in waves across the lawn, swinging up the trunks of the trees, as if trying to catch the white mushroom snowcaps above.

  “It is…beautiful.” Mariabella’s breath escaped her in a cloud. She stood with Jake on the stone walkway of the Firefly Inn, and felt as if she’d stepped into a Christmas song.

  “You like it. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “I…1 love it. I had no idea places like this existed outside of books.” She looked up at him. “You own this?”

  “Not anymore. My father sold it a few years ago. This used to be what a Lattimore property was like.”

  “And you changed for…” She waved behind her, in the direction they had traveled.

  “For dollars and cents. There’s not as much money in little inns tucked away in the country as there is in megahotels in major cities.”

  “Oh.” She drew in a breath, letting the crisp winter air revive her after all the hours in the limousine.

  “Do you want to go inside?”

  “I thought you did not own it anymore.”

  “I called in a favor. Come on.” He put out his hand.

  She slid her palm into his, and even though they were both wearing gloves—his leather, hers wool—she could feel the heat in their touch. Feel the solidity of his large, firm grip. She’d thought today could be just business. A day of nothing but looking at properties and convincing Jake Lattimore why none of his offerings would work in Harborside.

  Except she kept forgetting that part of it. And she kept forgetting she was part of the royal Santaro bloodline, and should be acting as such. Using the authoritative mannerisms she had learned to take control of this situation.

  But more than that, use the common sense she had learned and stop letting the rest of her body overrule her common sense.

  A jingle of bells caught her attention. “What is that?”

  Jake glanced at the barn that sat on the right side of the inn. He let out a little laugh. “Can’t get any more Christmasy than that.”

  “What?”

  “A sleigh ride.” He gestured toward the barn, and then Mariabella saw it. Two horses, attached to a sleigh, like something out of a book or a song.

  “I have never seen one in real life.”

  “Then you’ve never ridden in one, either?”

  “No.” She let out a long sigh. “I have always wondered what it would be like. You know, you hear the song on the radio? It sounds so…wonderful. So perfect.”

  A light dusting of snow had begun to fall, as if Mother Nature wanted to cast the perfect spell over the moment. Jake took her hand and led her down a stone path that led toward the sleigh. “Then let’s go.”

  “Now? I thought we had a schedule to keep.”

  “The world won’t fall apart if the two of us take ten minutes to ride across the snow.”

  A few minutes later, Mariabella found herself bundled beneath a plaid blanket, seated on a crimson velvet padded seat, while Jake sat beside her, a Thermos of hot chocolate between them. The driver snapped the reins, and the horses started, jerking the sleigh onto the snowy path. The move sent Mariabella and Jake on a collision course, their torsos meeting, their faces coming within inches. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not a problem.” She brought the blanket closer to her chin. The faster the horses went, the more winter’s cold wind whistled beneath the blanket, her coat, her sweater. She shivered.

  Jake put his arm around her, and drew her against his body. Warmth infused her, and so did a heat of a different kind.

  She didn’t pull away from either.

  Instead, she drew the blanket over both of them, and snuggled against him. The horses charged lightly forward, pulling the sleigh through the woods, the bells on their harnesses singing a soft song to match the heavy thudding of their hooves in the sn
ow.

  Jake poured her a cup of hot chocolate, and made a joke she laughed at but couldn’t remember five seconds later. All she knew was that she was laughing, and he was laughing, and a détente had sprung up between them made all that much sweeter by the cocoa and the snow.

  It was, as she’d said earlier, beautiful. And perfect. And so amazingly ordinary.

  “Are you having fun?” Jake asked. He brushed his lips against the top of her head, and she leaned closer. Seeking more. Just for now.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.”

  Too soon, the sleigh ride drew to a close, the horses circling back to the barn. Jake helped her down, a smile lingering on his face. “We’ll have to do that again sometime.”

  Did he mean a future with that remark, or was he merely making conversation?

  Did it matter, really? When next Christmas came, she’d be in Uccelli. Far from sleigh rides, hot cocoa—

  And Jake Lattimore.

  “Can we go inside?” Mariabella asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “It is very cold.”

  “Of course.”

  Inside, they were greeted by a matronly woman with a wide smile, who told Jake to make himself at home. Several guests filled the downstairs rooms, sitting on the dark brown leather sofas in front of the crackling fire, or in the wingback chairs playing checkers. Others read books by the large picture windows. The scent of apples and cinnamon carried on the air from the kitchen, promising a sweet treat later.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Jake said. “I want to show you my favorite room in the whole place.”

  She hesitated, then saw the bright excitement in his gaze, and headed upstairs with Jake Lattimore, even as her better judgment told her being alone with him kept tangling her deeper with a man who awakened a side of her she thought she’d had under control. Yet, every time they were together, she forgot herself. Forgot the objections she had to him.

  Forgot her priority—preserving this town.

  Every wall in the inn held a photograph, a painting, a piece of memorabilia, that spoke of decades of guests and history. An eclectic mix of furniture, from the rose-patterned wingback chairs to the thick burgundy leather sofa, sent out an air of comfort. Unlike the castle in Uccelli, the charm of this inn existed in its quirkiness, in rooms decorated by chance, not by a professional.